Consortium for establishing a national research data infrastructure for and together with computer science (NFDIxCS)

The aim of the NFDIxCS consortium is to create an infrastructure in which services for storing domain-specific data objects from computer science are provided, taking into account the FAIR principles. The implementation is carried out by developing a research data management container (RDMC) in which data from the entire breadth of computer science, i.e. all sub-disciplines such as theoretical computer science but also artificial intelligence and machine learning, are stored together with their specific processing environment.
In addition to the data itself, the RDMC will contain the corresponding metadata and context information, the software used for processing and the execution information in a standardized form. The consortium promotes the implementation of the FAIR principles for informatics research data and software artifacts and works towards the creation of generally accepted standards in this context. In addition, the consortium promotes the application of computer science methods such as big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning and provides a platform for communication between the computer science community and other scientific fields or NFDI consortia.

The NFDIxCS consortium consists of a network of 17 co-applicants and 38 participants. The applicants include the University of Duisburg-Essen, the University of Potsdam, the Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V., Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, University of Hamburg, Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich, Technical University Munich, Gesellschaft für wissenschaftliche Datenverarbeitung mbH Göttingen, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Technical University Dresden, Forschungszentrum Jülich, University of Bayreuth, University of Paderborn, Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen, Technical University Darmstadt, Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz Center for Informatics and FIZ Karlsruhe - Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure. Spokespersons of the consortium are Prof. Dr. Michael Goedicke from the University of Duisburg-Essen and the Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. as well as Prof. Dr. Ulrike Lucke from the University of Potsdam and the Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V.

FIZ Karlsruhe employees support the consortium in ethical and legal issues relating to the research data infrastructure to be created in computer science. This includes the legally compliant implementation of the infrastructure, in particular in the light of the normative EU digital strategy, as well as the provision of legal services for the use of the infrastructure and the RDMC. The latter focuses on the handling of legal issues relating to the reusability of data in the various sub-areas of IT. While data protection and copyright aspects play a subordinate role in certain areas of computer science, they are at the center of current discussions and legal and ethical questions in the field of artificial intelligence and machine learning, for example. The research-oriented answering of such questions is supplemented by a clear and schematic presentation of legal structures on the reusability of data in computer science. This is intended to strengthen the ethical and legal awareness of researchers in computer science and at the same time promote the relevant handling of research projects with regard to the reusability of research data. One focus is on the handling and provision of free and open source software.